CHAPTER NINETEEN
TIME SPENT IN RECONNAISSANCE

Fort York, a week later

Hervey found the first week of their garrison uncommonly hard. Though the barracks in Fort York were well-found – they had been rebuilt only four years earlier, having been twice burned – the cold outdoors went ill with both officers and dragoons, and parades were few. The horse lines were improvised but ample, with bracken for bedding and good hay in fair quantities, and troop horse and charger alike had coats as thick as Hervey could remember since Corunna. After a few days, voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company arrived with the regiment’s winter clothing: infantry greatcoats of grey Kersey, and the beef boots and fur caps which had been authorized for dismounted dress instead of the cloaks, hussar boots and shakos which scarcely kept even an active man warm. A brisk trade was done in extra fur, too.

Henrietta had remained indoors for the most part. Lady Sarah Maitland had begged her to come and lodge at Government House, but she had steadfastly insisted on remaining with her husband in their cramped quarters in the fort, though after only a few days, through the generosity of the lieutenant-governor’s lady, they were furnished very comfortably; so comfortably, in fact, that with their travelling service she was able to give two small dinner parties, and to receive Sarah Maitland daily in the morning or afternoon appropriately, and sometimes both. Even Ruth, Henrietta’s lady’s maid, complained only once in that time – when Private Johnson had left unguarded a pan of linseed on the kitchen range, and it had boiled over and run down the side and onto a pair of her mistress’s shoes which stood there drying.

More than once Hervey had watched his wife as she read or wrote or busied herself with some little detail of their domestic arrangements, and marvelled at her choosing to forgo the comfort of Manvers Priory for this. Had she known how difficult it would be? Would she now change her mind if it were possible? Never had he seen her look more contented, though. It humbled him indeed. And he envied her the apparent contentment, for although he had accepted the inevitable cure of the lance in respect of Lord Towcester – to puncture the impostor, and express all the malice – he had reached no conclusions as to when or how. In truth, though his mind told him the lance was inevitable, his every instinct recoiled from it still.

A few days after the voyageurs had come, and with General Rolt still in Quebec, Sir Peregrine Maitland suggested to Lord Towcester that a reconnaissance along the Niagara frontier might be made to advantage. ‘For I think it would be no bad thing to trail your red cloaks along the border and give something for the Americans across the river to observe.’

Lord Towcester agreed at once. It was unlikely of itself to secure him the Bath ribbon, which every Waterloo colonel was wearing, but it must be a beginning. And with but a single road, and guides, there could hardly be much opportunity of becoming lost, which had always been his anxiety on taking to the field before. Nevertheless, it took three full days of preparation by the adjutant before he felt himself ready to take the lead of the Niagara patrol – furnished, though it was, entirely by Hervey’s troop.

The distance from York to Fort George, where the Niagara River entered Lake Ontario, was eighty-five miles. A little over half of it would be done by way of Dundas Street, the military road which ran from the St Lawrence River just above Montreal, through York and on to London on the Thames River not far short of the Michigan border. At Burlington Bay, the westernmost point of Lake Ontario, they would leave the road and take a slower one along the south-west shore of the lake, crossing many streams, to the fort. It was, under clement conditions, with an overnight rest at the marching camp at Burlington, a journey of but two days, with a further day, then, to show along the Niagara River frontier to Fort Erie. Retracing their steps, it would be the same again home. A seven-day patrol with a day’s lairage was nothing exceptional by Peninsular standards, but although no snow had fallen for a week, it was colder than when they had arrived. Hervey’s principal concern was forage, and then their own rations. He had seen how fast a troop horse finished its hard feed in conditions like this (not quite like this, for the Astorgias had not been as cold, though they had been wet), and how a dragoon emptied his mess tin of beef and dumplings in half the usual time. He therefore decided on one bat-horse for every two troopers.

‘I will not have my regiment turned into a commissary train, Captain Hervey!’ Lord Towcester objected on being told of this.

To Hervey that chafed badly. If there were one thing of which he was certain it was the business of maintaining condition of men and horses in the field. It couldn’t be book-learnt, only bought by true experience. ‘Your lordship, I was thinking of unencumbering the troop horses, else they will look like—’

‘I will not be contradicted, Captain Hervey! General Maitland shall take the salute as the patrol leaves, and I intend its looking as crack as anything he ever saw at Waterloo. Do you understand, sir?’

Hervey did – all too well. But still there remained the question of feed and rations, for the quartermaster’s art was the one that permitted the least flight of fancy. ‘Your lordship, how therefore do you wish the victuals to be transported?’

Lord Towcester was in thrusting form. ‘If needs be we shall live off the land!’

If the lieutenant colonel had said he expected them to be provisioned on the march by ravens, like Elijah, Hervey could hardly have been more shocked. His silence was not apparent to Lord Towcester, however, who was attending instead to the guest list for the regiment’s first dinner in ten days’ time. But in Towcester’s vanity and inexperience, Hervey saw an opportunity to have his way, albeit deviously. ‘Your lordship, might I make a suggestion in order that General Maitland should see us at our best?’

Lord Towcester looked up. ‘By all means, Captain Hervey.’

‘If we send horses on ahead with winter stores and all the feed, we should then be able to parade in field dress and cloaks, without even a blanket roll on the saddles.’

Lord Towcester nodded. ‘I shall consider it, Captain Hervey.’

‘Ride in cloaks only?’ Serjeant Armstrong looked astonished.

‘That is what I said,’ Hervey told him. ‘We shall propel ourselves briskly, and it will keep the weight down.’

Armstrong looked unconvinced.

‘The first stage is a good road,’ Hervey continued. ‘We ought to make the marching camp in eight hours.’

‘Not on this snow we won’t. I rode out to the picket post this morning and it’s balling worse than I ever saw. We might as well take the shoes off.’

‘It would be tempting if we knew what the ground would be like at Niagara, but it might be rocklike.’

‘Well, if that’s the best you can do, sir—’

‘I fear it is. Now, do I need to remind you that this patrol is your chance to display to the lieutenant colonel?’

Armstrong nodded. ‘Ay. The last chance.’

‘Then who shall we place in charge of the bat-horses?’

‘Clarkson, I reckon.’

Hervey thought for a while. ‘Would you make Clarkson next for serjeant?’

‘In the troop? Yes. But given the choice I’d have Collins. Clarkson’s good, and he’ll be a bloody clewed-up serjeant-major in his turn. But Collins has got the stamp of a Lincoln.’

‘Do you think so? I’m not saying I don’t agree, but . . .’

‘That’s because Collins is the best corporal in the regiment, and because he seems every bit a corporal you wonder if he can be a serjeant. When he’s a serjeant it’ll be the same. I’ve always reckoned the best – NCOs and officers – strike you whatever rank they’re in. I never have understood the idea that someone could be a lousy troop man but a good RSM or colonel. More coffee?’

Hervey held out his tin cup, contemplating Armstrong’s proposition. If there were any other NCOs with such an opinion, he supposed they would never venture to give it. ‘You don’t believe that, because there are different qualities needed to be a troop man from those of the commissary, you could do one well and the other badly?’

‘I wasn’t saying that, sir. I don’t believe every good serjeant would make an RSM, or captain a colonel. But I do believe it goes the other way round. The best horses run well on any going.’

Hervey smiled at the imagery. ‘In principle I think you may be wrong. But I confess that in practice all I’ve ever seen says you’re right. I suspect Mr Lincoln was the finest of corporals.’

‘You can bet on it. I wish he’d come back soon.’

‘We all say amen to that.’

‘But I grant you Clarkson runs Collins close, sir. Are you to fill the vacancy, then?’

Hervey sighed. ‘It’s unfair on Clarkson if I manage to get Collins back and promote him. It’s unfair, too, to try an exchange. They’re both drawing pay of serjeant, as I understand it, so I thought I’d let things run a bit longer to see what turned up.’

Armstrong smiled. ‘That’s what Major Edmonds would have done. “First whiff of black powder and all bets are off,” he always said.’

Hervey frowned. ‘That doesn’t say much for Clarkson’s chances then. There’ll be no black powder here. And, do you know, I shall be glad of it, and so should you be. Fatherhood’s not best an absentee state, I think.’

‘Bloody ’ell, sir. Who’s been telling you that?’

‘Nobody.’

‘You mean you thought of it yourself?’

Hervey raised his eyebrows.

‘Sir, I’d be thinking about half-pay if I were you!’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I saw a pretty sort of crib being knocked up yesterday in the serjeants’ lines.’

Armstrong made an unconvincing huffing sound as he left the troop office.

In the modest but comfortable Hervey quarters, Henrietta was being stoical – as was Caithlin Armstrong in that corner of the barracks that served as the Armstrongs’ quarters. This sort of thing – the Niagara patrol – was after all why the Sixth had come to the Canadas, although both wives had perhaps thought that winter quarters would allow them the months of their confinement united with their men.

‘The captain’s lady and Molly O’Grady!’ said Hervey, smiling proudly when Henrietta declared she was not in the least preoccupied by the prospect of his leaving her.

She looked at him, puzzled.

He frowned. It was easy to forget that it had been less than a year since she had been taken on strength, so to speak. Barrackroom wisdom took rather longer to acquire. ‘ “The captain’s lady and Molly O’Grady are sisters beneath the skin.” It’s one of the things the men say. Except they say the colonel’s lady.’

Henrietta did not tell him that a day had not passed without her imagining Princess Charlotte’s terrible trial – and fate – and without wondering why she, Lady Henrietta Hervey, should expect to be spared when a royal princess, attended by the foremost obstetrician of the land, had fared no better in her labour than a beast of the field. She wondered if she would bear it well when her own trial came. The newspapers had made much of the princess’s courage, of her bearing the agonies ‘with a Brunswick heart’. Not for Charlotte the laudanum’s ease. Did she have a heart as strong as a Brunswick? She feared not. Indeed, she knew it.

‘Matthew, you will be close when the time comes, won’t you?’

He knelt by her side and took her hand.

‘Just at your duty in the fort,’ she explained, placing her other hand over his, ‘so that if . . . then I should feel I could bear it the better.’

‘Yes,’ he said, gently. ‘I don’t imagine there’ll be another patrol in months. When the time comes I shall remain in my office until you send for me.’

He kissed her forehead, and then she kissed his lips.

‘Matthew, if anything were to happen . . .’

She seemed to be searching for the words; but Hervey could not help because he was unsure of what exactly was her fear, especially as she had said not a word to him about Princess Charlotte since they had set sail from England.

‘If anything should happen to me . . .’

He saw at once, and put an arm around her. ‘My dear, I was not going to say anything of this, but our surgeon told me he would never have allowed the princess to go on as she did had he been in attendance.’

Henrietta looked at him, perplexed.

He hesitated. ‘He would have delivered the child by section.’

Well had he hesitated, and better had he said nothing at all. He cursed himself as the colour drained from Henrietta’s face like sand from a minute-glass.

‘My darling, I—’

She gripped his hand hard. ‘Matthew, do you know what you say?’

He had thought he did, but now he was not sure.

‘No woman survives that, Matthew!’

‘But the surgeon is a good man. Why would he have said that?’

Henrietta’s distress took longer to subside than her husband expected, but subside it did, and they agreed that there would be no more talk of such things, and that they would rest confident in the will of God and the combined wisdom of the several doctors and birth attendants at her disposal.

At dinner that evening, Henrietta was as gay as she ever was, and later, in each other’s arms, she told him she feared nothing as long as he was with her. Only the next day did he really comprehend the fright he had given her in speaking of a Caesarean section, for when he confronted the surgeon with Henrietta’s dismay, the Glasgow veteran of many a field amputation had rounded on him and cursed him for his ignorance, telling him it was only in the last decade that his profession had been able to perform a live section successfully, and that every woman knew it was but a desperate remedy to save the child only. ‘D’ye know naught about these things, man?’ he had demanded. And Hervey had had to confess that there was indeed a void in his learning.

When the time came for the patrol to leave, Henrietta said her goodbyes nobly, bidding her husband a happy, even carefree, farewell. She had, after all, a good reserve of novels, she assured him, and the frequent company of Lady Sarah Maitland. And he in turn was content to believe that her anxiety had been of the moment only, exacerbated by his clumsy reassurance. And if he had been alarmed to know the truth, he would have been proud nevertheless to know how completely she had been taken on strength, how completely she now played the role of captain’s lady – though not so much for the sake of the Molly O’Gradys but for the man she considered was her very life.

From an upstairs window a little later, Henrietta watched the half-troop parade for the lieutenant-governor. Thirty-two dragoons and four officers – the lieutenant colonel, adjutant, Hervey, and Seton Canning – ranked past Sir Peregrine Maitland in their red cloaks as the trumpet-major and four trumpeters blew the general salute. Red cloaks against the snow: confident, uncompromising contrast, just like Hervey himself. ‘Please God, deliver him,’ she prayed passionately, clutching her hands together. ‘Deliver him from evil, and from himself.’

Outside the gates Major Lawrence joined them, on a hardylooking cob, together with two Cayuga Indians equally sure mounted. The three were well wrapped in buckskin, fox and beaver, their feet especially.

Lawrence stared incredulously at the patrol. ‘Why in God’s name are you not wearing winter warms, Hervey? When the sun goes you’ll turn to blocks of ice.’

‘We’re going to trot in a minute or so,’ replied Hervey.

‘Then you’ll be warmer while you do.’ Lawrence frowned. ‘But you can’t trot the whole way to Burlington. And on this snow if you rush it you’ll have falls. Four or five inches down there’s ice like glass, and this fresh stuff will ball up too.’

‘To tell the truth, my intention is to catch up the bat-horses.’

‘You’ll be sorely pressed to do that: they left an hour ago!’

Hervey paused just long enough to judge his secret safe with the superintendent. ‘I told them they were to mark time at the first five-mile point.’

Lawrence smiled. ‘That was wise as well as cunning. But I promise you you’ll never make the same mistake of parting from your supply again after an hour of this in cloaks and boots!’

Hervey sighed. ‘That’s what I was hoping,’ he said with a sort of knowing frown. ‘Why are you come, incidentally?’

‘I’ve called a meeting of my field officers at Fort Erie. It seemed opportune.’

‘And the Indians are your escorts?’

Lawrence smiled indulgently. ‘I rather fancied they would do you well as scouts.’

‘Ah, yes, indeed. I’m very grateful. Shall I send two dragoons with them?’

‘I think not. They’ll be happier left alone.’ He nodded to the Indians.

The Cayugas sped off at once to take the far point. The Iroquois were not known as a horse nation, but that was not apparent as they put their ponies into a canter in a very few paces. And besides being able to warn early of anything that might hinder the patrol’s progress, they would be excellent guides, it seemed; for in the dusting of snow, as Lawrence called it, which the dawn had brought, their tracks stood out plainly. Not that taking a false turn on Dundas Street seemed likely, since on either side was a formidable barrier of fir trees. Only here and there would they find a clearing for a dwelling house, or where timber had been cut for a more distant purpose.

Serjeant Armstrong had been let in on the bat-horse plan only late that morning, and he had obligingly continued to pretend he had no idea that Hervey was acting other than with an entirely free hand. The bat-horses’ tracks looked as fresh as the Cayugas’, for there was no wind to drift the snow, and the sun was not strong enough to melt so much as one snowflake on a pine needle. But they were not the trailing lines of trotting horses, and certainly not the furrows of the Cayugas’ hand-gallop. Clarkson was doing his job – thank God.

Major Lawrence had fallen in beside the lieutenant colonel as the patrol set off, but he soon found him too taciturn to persist with, and so Hervey had his company again before not too long. And glad of it he would be, too, for otherwise Dundas Street was but cold monotony.

It was not long before they made the rendezvous with the bathorses, however, and Lord Towcester’s obvious relief was such that Hervey did not even bother with the lines he had rehearsed. They had ridden for little more than an hour, yet he knew they would soon have had men slipping into winter torpor. He had seen it once before, in the Astorgias. It was the easy way: they would stop fighting the cold, allow the numbness to come, and then a sleep they would not emerge from.

In that hour, too, they had not seen any living thing of the wild, nor even a trace of one. There would surely be no more talk of living off the land. Indeed, the lieutenant colonel now seemed content to let Hervey have command of the patrol in all its details, and did not object when he ordered horses to be led from time to time, even though he himself had made his objections to the practice known often enough.

The rest of the march to Fort George was as without incident as the country was without wildlife. An owl was heard in the night, and some birds briefly at first light. But the call of the wolf, which the men had hourly expected (and keenly so), did not come. The bivouac at Burlington was a hard one, and a wolf’s call would have been some consolation, something of which to write home to thrill the humdrum, for little sleep was had by any. The campfires had seemed without heat, the rum without ability to warm beyond a few minutes. Resuming the march, if not actually a pleasure, had been a relief; except that everywhere the forest enveloped them, the trees so heavy with snow that it seemed as if they were beneath the walls of some great white city. For miles there was nothing else to see. And the steamy breath of six dozen horses and men gave it an eeriness quite unlike anything Hervey had seen before – or, for that matter, Armstrong too.

But Fort George welcomed them generously. Its quartermaster was relieved to have an opportunity to break out the stores, for he had laid in provisions for twice the number of troops that would need them now the threat of hostilities seemed certain to be past. The patrol ate well on salt pork and buffalo, pickled pomme blanche and compote, and they slept well in the stove-heated barracks. Lord Towcester was entertained by the fort’s commandant, and retired early, leaving Hervey to listen to one of Major Lawrence’s field officers.

‘The condition of the Six Nations between the Erie and the Huron is daily more distressing,’ said the lieutenant, an officer who had been so long seconded to the Indian Department that he still referred to his own regiment as the Royal Americans. ‘It’s the want of game, everywhere. Three of the hunting groups have already broken camp and moved to find other grounds, and they haven’t had to do that in more than a generation.’

‘Why is there so little game?’ asked Hervey. He understood this winter to be a not especially hard one.

‘The winter’s by no means the harshest,’ replied the lieutenant. ‘And that’s puzzling the Six Nations too. But there’s no doubting the deer and the bear have gone – and the beaver above all. Some of the younger braves are saying it’s the fault of the white man. They know he doesn’t rob them or harry them as his cousin below the Lakes does, but they reckon he upsets the balance of things in the wilderness.’

‘And do you think that resentment will turn against us?’ Hervey was intrigued rather than anxious.

‘Well,’ said the lieutenant, noting that Major Lawrence too was waiting intently on the reply, ‘I’ve heard talk again of the affair of the Niagara scalplock, and how it spoke for the way the white man would abandon his Indian friends to save his own skin when the time came. The braves wonder how long it will be before the white man above and below the Lakes makes common cause against them.’

‘Are there other voices?’ said Major Lawrence, relighting his cigar.

‘Yes, the elders are saying that spring will see the return of the deer, the bear and the beaver. But again, the younger braves point out that, after the spring, and the summer, and the autumn, there will come another winter.’

They sat late into the small hours talking of what it might come to.

They left Fort George at nine the next morning, red cloaks over winter warms. It must have been a good display to the American garrison across the river. Lord Towcester seemed content that it was, steadfastly refusing even to glance towards Fort Niagara, such was his contempt for the American revolutionaries, as he insisted on calling them.

They made the heights of Queenston before eleven. They passed above the falls after midday, hearing more than they saw of the great cataract, though the winter flow was a trickle compared with the spring thaw. They took their ease for an hour in Chippeway, where reports of their progress brought out villagers bearing kettles and pots of boiling water even as they rode up. In the afternoon they passed through the rich settlements of the upper Niagara, and on down to Fort Erie, arriving a little before last light. Here the evening was much as the one before, with another of Major Lawrence’s field officers confirming the troubling assessment of the Indians’ condition, although he was not inclined to believe that the younger braves’ blaming the white man would come to much once spring began to show.

Next morning, snow was falling as the troop mustered for the return march, and there was talk of staying at the fort until it stopped. But Lord Towcester saw no reason why they should not at least set out, for between Fort Erie and Chippeway there was shelter enough if the snow became heavier, and they could bivouac at any number of places if things came to the worst. He had matters pressing in plenty at York. Hervey was content enough with the condition of the troop after his morning inspection, and so they left by the road they had come on at a quarter to ten, the Cayuga scouts this time taking a much closer point since visibility was reduced.

Major Lawrence decided not to return with them, however. He intended taking the ferry across the river to Buffalo to meet with his counterpart there, to discover what policy the United States would be adopting towards their Indians in the spring. Rumours of inevitable displacements had already reached him in York from diplomatic sources in Montreal, and Mr Bagot himself had thought that the settlers’ inroads west of the Missouri would soon unravel Washington’s resettlement policy.

They made the fifteen miles to Chippeway just after midday. The snow had stopped falling soon after they set off, and they had been able to maintain a brisk trot for a mile or so at a time. They made a brief halt at the village, where the people showed the same alacrity in hospitality as the day before, and the dragoons were again able to eat hot without the trouble of dismounting their own camp kettles.

Lord Towcester summoned Hervey to his side. ‘See here, there is no need at all of our spending another night at Fort George. I consider there to be no purpose in it, anyway. We can take this road here’ – he indicated the line with a gloved finger, rather indistinctly – ‘along Lundy’s Lane to begin with. There was some skirmish of cavalry in the war there, so it must be passable to the horse. We may then proceed to the road from Queenston to Burlington that runs atop the ridge, instead of skirting the lake. It will save us all of eight leagues, and a further night.’

Hervey was not so sure. Indeed, he felt uneasy. If the lieutenant colonel wished to curtail the patrol, that was of course his prerogative, and he assumed that Lord Towcester possessed that discretion in Sir Peregrine’s orders. But the distance by this direct route was, even at a rough calculation, not much short of fortyfive miles. They had at best five hours of daylight left, though the moon and snow would make movement at night along a road relatively easy. But if the weather were to change again, the route could be treacherous. And the road through the forest to the Burlington ridge looked little better than a track.

‘Do you think we should ask the Indians, your lordship?’

‘Confound the Indians, Captain Hervey! Do you even know enough of their language? They’ll do as they’re damn well told!’

Lord Towcester was clearly in one of his peremptory moods, but Hervey felt bound to risk one more objection. ‘We might be benighted, though, sir, however well we do.’

‘In Heaven’s name, Captain Hervey! I heard tell at Fort George of a woman who went on foot this way during the war, and warned our men of an attack! You’re not telling me you’re afraid to take to the woods on a horse if a confounded woman can do it on her feet!’

Hervey had heard of Mrs Secord’s fearless journey. But she had walked from Queenston not Chippeway, and in the middle of summer. He thought it useless to point this out to Lord Towcester, however. ‘Very good, your lordship. I will tell the scouts,’ he said, wondering to himself if he could.

In fact, communicating with the scouts was not as difficult as Hervey expected. He was able to get them to comprehend his intentions easily enough in a mixture of English and simple sign language (the map, predictably, was of no use to the proceedings). They were evidently unhappy with the news – for three reasons, as far as he could make out. First, the road was difficult, with many ups and downs and streams to cross. Then they made signs indicating that night would fall on them, and finally something about passing through land which the Mississauga hunted. Hervey was only too relieved that they did not turn and walk away when he told them he intended taking the road anyway. But it was his first taste of an Indian’s displeasure, even in that brief exchange, and it was not palatable.

He called Serjeant Armstrong aside and made a clean breast of things. ‘I’ll not say anything to Mr Seton Canning, but it’s as well you know my apprehension. I dare say all will be well. We’ll end up huddled in the forest after midnight when the moon sets, but that we can bear. And the Indians will be used to people riding through if there’s a road cut, so they can’t be all that troubled by our doing so. But I want NCOs’ pistols primed all the same. No others, mind.’

Armstrong nodded. ‘I was talking to them Indians last night. They’re worried where all the game’s going – all of them are. Some of the tribes are starving.’

Hervey could only admire his serjeant’s way with men. ‘Major Lawrence’s officers have been telling me this as well.’

‘I suggest we take flints out of weapons, too – except the NCOs, I mean. If one of them greenheads’ pistols goes off . . .’

Hervey nodded. ‘Ay. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

In the event, the road was better than Hervey had imagined, but narrow. They rode in file rather than threes, though, and from time to time the files had to merge. But the snow hadn’t settled so deep as on the road they had left, and it didn’t ball in the hooves. They managed some good trots in the first ten miles. The Cayugas rode very close point, however, not once losing sight behind. They seemed distinctly less at ease than on the ride out, and not a word passed between them.

The forest impressed its silence on the dragoons, too. For the most part, the only sound was the occasional snort from their plodding troopers, or the jingling of a bridoon, or the chink of stirrups as the files came too close. Looking left or right into the forest, Hervey could not imagine the sound travelling more than a few yards in that mass of fir, beech and elm. It looked more impenetrable than anything he had seen in India, even. And all the time there was neither sight nor sound of another living thing, on the ground, in the trees or overhead.

The Mississaugas came out of the forest like some sudden, mechanical change of scenery on a stage. There seemed no movement, only appearance – a dozen or so warriors at the same instant, in the same attitude, well wrapped in long moosehide coats, full hair to the shoulders, faces dyed red above the cheekbones. They stood, rifle in left hand, motionless and wholly impassive.

The Cayugas halted – froze. Lord Towcester drew his pistol, pulling back the hammer with his left hand. He lost his grip, grabbed as it fell, but missed. It hit the ground handle first, springing the hammer. The noise was like a cannon in the silence. He spun his horse round.

‘Threes about! Threes about!’ he shouted. But there was no room for even files to turn. He barged at Hervey and his trumpeter to make way.

Hervey was so startled, he grabbed his arm. ‘Sir, they’ve gone, they’ve gone.’

Lord Towcester turned in the saddle. The Mississaugas had disappeared as suddenly as they had come. He was dumbstruck.

‘We should trot on, sir,’ pressed Hervey. ‘Look, the scouts are doing the same!’ He seized the lieutenant colonel’s reins and pulled his horse into motion.